1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information searching apparatus that conducts a search for a document as well as a method and a computer program product therefor.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, many techniques used for conducting a search in a recording medium have been proposed due to developments in computer technology and increases in the capacity of recording media used in computers. For instance, examples of techniques for conducting a search with a terminal device that is used by users on a daily basis includes a technique called a desktop search technique.
By using the desktop search technique, it is possible to search for a specific document from among a group of documents that are recorded on a storage medium such as a hard disk within a terminal device such as a personal computer (PC). When conducting a search for a document, the user is able to specify, as a search condition, not only a keyword contained in the document, but also attribute information such as the file format of the document (e.g., e-mail, word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, etc.), the date on which the document was created, the date on which the document was updated, the creator of the document, the date on which the document was sent/received as an e-mail message, and the sender/receiver of the e-mail message. By using the desktop search technique, the user is able to conduct a search for a desired document within the terminal device.
When conducting a desktop search, if a large number of documents are stored in a storage medium being a search target in which the search is to be conducted, the user needs to specify an appropriate keyword and/or appropriate attribute information as the search condition. In a case where the user fails to specify an appropriate keyword and/or appropriate attribute information, a large number of documents will be output as a search result. This situation sometimes makes it difficult to find the desired document.
Also, with regard to the output of a search result, the desktop search is not able to use a technique used by a web search by which documents having higher levels of reliability are output in higher ranks based on a link relation with other documents (for example, a page rank algorithm used by a search engine). Thus, in a desktop search, the document desired by the user will not necessarily be output in a higher rank of a search result. Consequently, the user needs to look for the desired document from among the documents in the output search result. In this situation, the user needs to spend a lot of time going through the search result.
To avoid this problem, the user needs to specify an appropriate keyword and/or appropriate attribute information as the search condition. Thus, it takes a lot of trouble and time to specify the search condition. In addition, in order for the user to come up with and specify an appropriate search condition, the user is required to know, in detail, the attribute information that he/she is able to use. Thus, in a case where the user is not familiar with conducting searches, it takes even more trouble and time for the user to specify the search condition.
Incidentally, a technique for determining a user's intention based on the contents of a specified word has been proposed. It may seem that it is possible to specify a more appropriate search condition by using the user's intention that is determined based on the contents of the specified word. An example of the technique for determining a user's intention based on the contents of a specified word is disclosed in, for example, JP-A 2006-65754 (KOKAI).
According to the technique disclosed in JP-A 2006-65754 (KOKAI), a dictionary related to words is provided. By using the dictionary, attribute information is appended to each of words that are contained in a document, the attribute information representing the meaning of the corresponding word. When the user has selected one of the words, it is possible to analyze the contents of the word specified by the user, based on the attribute information appended to the word.
However, the technique disclosed in JP-A 2006-65754 (KOKAI) is for analyzing the intention of an action taken by the user and is not for specifying a search condition used for conducting a search for a document. Thus, it is difficult to apply this technique to the specifying of the search condition.